


'Twas the Night Before Christmas

by SallyExactly



Category: Timeless (TV 2016)
Genre: Christmas, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Not Canon Compliant - s02e11-12 The Miracle of Christmas (Timeless)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:21:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28324494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SallyExactly/pseuds/SallyExactly
Summary: Christmas in the new safe house is shaping up to be pretty grim. But at least the team has each other.
Relationships: Rufus Carlin & Wyatt Logan & Lucy Preston, Rufus Carlin/Jiya
Comments: 4
Kudos: 17
Collections: Timeless Secret Santa Fic Exchange 2020





	'Twas the Night Before Christmas

**Author's Note:**

> For yutomi1 on Tumblr.

“ Well, the weather outside is definitely frightful.” Rufus peered through the window at the snow falling thick and fast.

“Yeah, well, let someone else build the fire this time,” Flynn muttered from the armchair.

“Did you die of hypothermia? No? You’re welcome.”

Jiya got up from her desk and joined him at the window, sliding her arm around his waist. “It did take me two days to wash the smell out of my hair.” She kissed his temple.

He gently tugged at a lock of her hair. “It wasn’t all bad.”

She smiled up at him, both of them remembering one lengthy shower in particular.

“We’re out of bread,” Wyatt said from the kitchen, closing the cupboard with more force than necessary.

Rufus turned to look at him.

“Here.” Lucy held out a box of Ritz crackers. “Just use these.”

Wyatt stared at her. “How is it that you’re the coastal elite and I’m the boy from Texas, and yet you’re the food heathen?”

Lucy looked indignant.

“Anyway, we’re also almost out of anything to put on bread.”

“The supplies should arrive tonight,” Agent Christopher said, coming out of her makeshift office just in time to catch what Wyatt said. “One of my best agents is driving up from town. Get by on cracker sandwiches for a few hours and then we’ll have Christmas groceries.”

Her voice was crisp. Probably had something to do with the fact that she was spending Christmas holed up with the team instead of with her family. It sucked... Rufus could relate.

“And the presents, right?” Lucy’s own voice was tentative, maybe because none of them were pissing off Agent Christopher these days, maybe because...

Maybe because this whole saving the world thing really fucking sucked and none of them believed much was going to go their way.

“Whatever you ordered, if it made it to the office by yesterday, it’ll be in the car,” Agent Christopher promised.

“Great,” Lucy said. “Dibs on the wrapping paper.”

Rufus turned back to the window, and put his arm around Jiya’s shoulder. He kissed the top of her head. Really, he had everything he needed for Christmas. He was alive. Jiya was safe in the present... or as safe as any of them were. He was with friends and teammates, the closest thing he had to family outside his actual family-- and his actual family even knew he was alive, now, and he’d get to video chat with them in the morning.

Still, he’d had enough terrible, makeshift meals to last a lifetime, so, the car... yeah, that was good. And Jiya was really going to like her present. At least, he hoped she was.

“Sure,” Wyatt said. “I got you all coal, so, that doesn’t need wrapping.”

“Wonderful.” Connor emerged from his room wearing several sweaters. “We can burn it and finally have this godforsaken place at a decent temperature.” He gave the ancient thermostat a dire look.

“Rufus, any luck with the quantum recalibration?” he added.

“Uh... yeah, here, take a look.” Rufus went back to the code he’d been working on.

“Good news.” Agent Christopher came out of her office, and Rufus blinked and looked up and realized time had passed. “The car is half an hour out.”

“Good.” Flynn looked outside. “Because much more of this and they’re not gonna get through.”

Rufus wanted to attribute that pessimistic prediction to Flynn’s, you know, entire personality, which had only intensified as Christmas got closer. But it sure didn’t look good outside.

Beside him, Jiya stretched and winced. He pressed his thumbs into the meat of her shoulders, where she got knots when she worked too long, and she made a throaty noise of relief. “We should eat something,” she said. “There’s plenty of odds and ends out there.”

“There’s always those MREs--”

“No,” Wyatt and Flynn chorused.

Rufus raised his hands, conceding the point.

Dinner was canned soup only a year out of date, and the end of a bag of freezer-burned vegetables. Rufus had had way worse, including several meals in the past that he’d been glad to be eating in dim light.

“Wash or dry?” Jiya asked, tipping her bowl to get the last of her soup.

When she put the bowl down, Rufus tapped her nose, wiping off a smudge of soup. “Dry.” It was cold here, and Jiya liked being able to submerge her hands in hot water for as long as it took her to do the dishes. Which was one reason that, for her Christmas gift, Rufus had rigged up some heated gloves and a heated chair cover. Well, it was really only a single panel of cloth that would run down the middle of the chair, but, it was better than nothing, right? All he needed was the batteries, and they would come with the--

“Hey,” he said. “Where’s the car?” It had been a good forty-five minutes since Agent Christopher’s announcement.

“I’ve heard nothing.” Her expression was grim.

“Can you track them or something?” Lucy asked.

Agent Christopher shook her head. “I know they’re within five miles of our location, but we disabled finer-grain tracking. It’s considered a security hazard.”

“You... locked yourself out of knowing where your own people are?”

“I can’t track the _car_. If I can get a hold of my agent, then I’ll know more.”

Rufus, Lucy, and Wyatt exchanged looks.

“When I know, you’ll know,” Agent Christopher added, and retreated to her makeshift office, looking even less happy than she had lately.

Rufus sat down to fiddle with the recalibration, with Jiya beside him, but neither of them were giving it their full attention. Partly because of the knowledge of the missing car, partly because Wyatt was getting distractingly antsy.

“Shouldn’t we send out a search party?” he said, checking out the window for the fifth time in five minutes.

“It’s too bad out there. We’d get lost in two minutes,” Flynn said.

“Oh, so we just leave that guy out there in the snow?”

“ _That guy_ probably knows where he is, which is more than any of us can say about him, and if he has any sense-- which is admittedly a dicey proposition-- he stayed with the car. If Homeland Security is sufficiently competent, he _might_ even have emergency gear.”

“Of course he has emergency gear.” Agent Christopher looked quietly horrified, and irritated at Flynn’s insinuations.

“Then we _probably_ wouldn’t be able to help him, and we’d get ourselves lost and possibly freeze to death.”

Wyatt looked outside again. “ _I_ don’t think it looks that bad.”

Rufus had no idea how he could _tell_ that, since it was dark and the entire view looked like static on an old-fashioned television.

“I was running winter search and rescue in the Dinarides by the time I was seventeen,” Flynn said drily. “But sure, let’s pretend it’s _not that bad_.” He gave Wyatt a pointed look.

“Nobody’s going out there,” Agent Christopher said firmly. “We don’t even know that he’s stuck. He could still make it through. If he doesn’t, basic search and rescue principles tell us we don’t make more work for the rescuers by getting lost ourselves.”

Wyatt glanced out the window and said nothing, very loudly. Rufus just shook his head. His teammates were crazy.

Jiya was rubbing the back of her neck, a tight little frown between her eyebrows, so he reached up and gently massaged the tight spots in her muscles. She looked up at him, that pinched little frown between her eyebrows smoothing out, and smiled, and kissed the corner of his mouth. “I know this Christmas sucks,” she whispered. “But I’m glad I’m with you.”

In reply, he kissed her, sliding his hands through her hair as she wrapped her arms around her neck. “I love you,” he murmured against her mouth.

When they finally broke apart, she said, “I love you too.” Then she leaned in and kissed the tip of his nose, smiling so that her dimples showed.

He reluctantly bent over his work again, because he didn’t want to be finishing this damn thing on Christmas. He just wanted _one day_ where he didn’t have to do anything related to time travel, where he could play video games long distance with Kevin and hear about all the wonderfully _normal_ things in Mom’s life and cuddle with Jiya. He didn’t expect to get it-- Emma would probably jump tomorrow, knowing her. But still, if they got lucky, he didn’t want to spend the day staring at equations.

“I have good news and I have bad news,” Agent Christopher said, coming out of her office.

“Bad news first,” Lucy said immediately.

“The _good_ news,” Agent Christopher began rather pointedly, “is that my agent made it back to town with a snowplow. He’s not stuck.”

“... so the bad news is the car is stuck,” Lucy sighed.

“Great,” Wyatt said. “Ritz cracker and mustard sandwiches for Christmas.”

“Or MREs,” Rufus suggested. They couldn’t be _that_ bad, right?

Wyatt and Flynn both _looked_ at him, and their expressions were so identical it was fucking uncanny.

“We’re all alive.” Jiya’s voice was steely. “And we’re together in the 21st century.”

Wyatt hesitated, and nodded. “Yeah. That’s what matters.”

“I think we can improve on that,” Agent Christopher said firmly. “Mason, you’re on bread duty. Bake us enough loaves and rolls to get us through.”

Connor beamed. The way he’d taken to baking, with the intense obsessiveness rich people saved for their hobbies, would’ve been weird in a different year, but, freaking time travel had really raised the bar, man.

“It’s yeasty alchemy, Rufus,” he’d said last month, eyes lighting up. “Science and a pinch of microorganisms transform this uninspired flour into bread.” And he hadn’t even been drunk at the time.

“I’m afraid my old wrists won’t handle the strain of kneading several days’ worth of bread for seven people,” he said now. “Wyatt, Flynn, I’m drafting you.”

“Why not Rufus?” Wyatt protested.

“Because I know what Rufus is working on, and it’s more important than bread.”

“Too bad,” Jiya said softly, so only they could hear.

He looked at her. “What, you want some space?”

“No. I was thinking about last week, when you kneaded that batch and the heater was malfunctioning...?”

His face heated. “It was sweltering in the kitchen. That’s why I had my shirt off.”

“ _Rufus_.” She sounded disbelieving, and was trying not to smile. “I’m _not_ complaining.”

He kissed her lightly on the mouth, and she cupped the back of his head and kept him from pulling away. Not that he was trying.

“Rufus isn’t _working_ , he’s making out,” Flynn protested, and Jiya straightened up and gave Flynn her best _I’m a tough 19_ _th_ _century badass, don’t even_ think _about starting something_ look.

Flynn sighed. “... as you were.”

“Lucy,” Agent Christopher continued. “Decorate the main room for us somehow. Use your imagination. I may have seen some boxes in the back of the storage closet... they might even be vintage.”

Lucy’s eyes lit up at the magic word, and she headed straight for the closet.

“What about you?” Connor asked.

“I’m going to take stock of that closet of dried beans and dehydrated vegetables, and see if I can’t come up with something that could be called dal without fear of perjury.”

The next while was punctuated with the percussive _thuds_ of Wyatt and Flynn taking out their pent-up frustrations on bread dough; the occasional crashes from the storage closet, always followed immediately by “I’m okay!”; the Christmas music Lucy had turned on; and the scraping noises as Agent Christopher excavated the other closet. Knowing that if he finished early, he’d get drafted, Rufus admittedly didn’t hurry, but he _was_ very, very thorough.

Flynn dropping into the seat across from him jolted him out of his coding flow state. “Can you find the car?” Flynn asked, wiping some stray bits of dough off his hands with a wet rag.

Rufus looked at him blankly.

“The Homeland Security car, Rufus.”

“Oh. Uh, Agent Christopher said they turned off the--”

“I’m not asking if she can find it, I’m asking if _you_ can find it.”

“How?”

“I don’t _know_ , Rufus. You and Jiya can do things I don’t understand.”

Rufus sighed. “I could try, but why?”

“If the storm stops tomorrow evening and we discover that the damn thing was stuck on our doorstep the whole time, we’ll all feel pretty stupid, don’t you think?”

“Fine, I’ll give it a shot.”

Flynn clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks.” He headed back to the kitchen, where the three of them were apparently starting on round two. Wyatt’s technique for “kneading” was apparently to make a rope out of the dough and then smack it against the top of the counter over and over again. Bread BDSM? Whatever. Rufus had work to finish.

He and Jiya finally got the equations wrapped up as Lucy was braiding garlands out of red and green utility rope she’d found in the depths of the closet. Rufus cobbled together some code to adapt the Lifeboat tracking program to scan for electromagnetic signatures in the nearby area, partially so he could look busy.

“Definitely not on our door step,” he reported, when Flynn caught his eye and came over to look. Assuming that was actually the Homeland Security car, and not Emma coming to kill them. “It’s about half a mile away.” He pointed on the screen.

Flynn made a face. “Too far.”

“Uh... yeah...” Hadn’t that been obvious already?

“Thanks anyway.”

Jiya helped haul the heavy stuff for Agent Christopher, while he gave Lucy a hand with the decorations. “You know, this used to be traditional,” Lucy said, straining to tack a garland into place.

“... decorating deep cover safehouses in military chic?”

Lucy glanced pointedly sideways at him. “Decorating on Christmas Eve.”

“Oh.”

“This whole ‘Christmas starts on Thanksgiving and lasts an eternity’ is a modern invention.”

“Like Amway and plutonium bombs.”

“Exactly.” Lucy’s face turned serious, and she was so obviously not watching what she was doing, Rufus was afraid she was going to hammer her thumb. Again.

“This was always my sister’s and my job,” she said finally. “Decorating the tree, and the house.”

“Hey,” Rufus said softly. “Why don’t you let me do this.”

She shook herself. “It’s fine. I don’t mind.”

“... I mean, I don’t think emergency first aid is at the top of anyone’s ‘greatest hits of Christmas Eve’ wish list.”

Lucy made an indignant face, but climbed down. When she reached the bottom, Rufus gave her a hug.

“Oh,” she sighed. “Thanks, Rufus.”

“Mm-hmm.”

“... was this just a ploy to get me off the ladder?”

Everyone sort of drifted into the main area about an hour later. Rufus had to admit, the place did look better, somehow. Lucy had hung paper decorations from the garlands, and the small army of loaves and rolls Connor, Wyatt and Flynn had made smelled really good. Flynn had apparently also gathered the ingredients for some kind of Croatian cookie, but refused to say anything more about it: “Powdered eggs and evaporated milk? They’re not gonna turn out.”

And Agent Christopher promised them several kinds of dal, and had put together a timetable of what needed to be rehydrated, when, that put some of the proof-of-concept tests for time travel to shame.

Connor brought out the shot glasses and passed around some of his stash. “I’ve certainly had worse Christmases.”

“We’ve all had worse Christmases,” Wyatt muttered. Yeah: Lucy wasn’t missing or possibly dead, Jiya wasn’t mysteriously sick, Wyatt wasn’t badly injured, and he himself wasn’t still pretending to his family that he was dead, so, this definitely had points on last year.

“... if only in my dreams,” the music crooned through a Scotch-induced lull in the conversation. Flynn’s face set into sharp lines, and he stalked off without another word.

Connor offered more Scotch, but no one took him up on it. Wyatt turned on a movie; Lucy took a book to her room. Rufus helped Connor wash the shot glasses.

He and Jiya took their turn in the bathroom, and hurried to change in their cold little room. Jiya began to brush out her hair. “Can I help?” he murmured, watching her by the light of their illicit space heater.

She smiled over her shoulder at him knowingly, and held out the brush.

Her hair was tangled from working in the closet, so he started from the bottom and worked his way up, very gently. The soft, silky strands of her hair under his fingers, the subtle smell of her shampoo, the low hum of the space heater, her occasional noises of contentment, the rhythmic sound of the brush... it all lulled him to a place where he forgot about everything that was going on out there. Jiya was right. They had what they needed.

When he was done, he gently draped her hair over her shoulder and kissed the exposed curve of her neck. She turned to him with a soft little smile. “Thanks.”

They crawled under the blankets, and she nestled back against him. The space heater was making a difference in the room, now, and something about the low glow of its indicator light was almost cozy. Rufus tucked his chin against the top of her head, wrapped his arm around her waist, and let their combined warmth relax him. She tucked her arm over his, and drew circles on the back of his hand with her thumb.

This was nice. Maybe in the morning they could get some more lazy moments to themselves, before Rufus had to get up to Skype with Mom and Kevin. Maybe they could lie in bed for a while and not immediately have to face the next crisis. Maybe, when they weren’t so tired...

He was drifting. He stretched up just far enough to make sure the space heater’s timer was turned on, and in the process bumped the cardboard box that served as a nightstand. His phone told him it was after midnight.

“Merry Christmas, my love,” he whispered, cuddling up to her again.

She was already asleep. But then, as _he_ fell asleep, warm and surprisingly content, the last thing he heard was a faint, barely-awake, “Merry Christmas.”

-

_THUD!_

Rufus jolted awake, alarmed before he processed what had happened. Jiya sat bolt upright. “ Outside,” she said, voice tight.

Agent Christopher was already halfway to the main door, gun in her hands. Wyatt’s door flew open and he stumbled out in  sweats ,  his own gun pointed at the floor . Rufus grabbed Jiya’s hand as Lucy appeared, looking  frightened \--

_THUD THUD THUD_ . Someone was hammering on the door outside. Then some yelling.

Connor stumbled into the main room and grabbed their biggest wrench, looking scared, but determined. “Stay back, Rufus.”

“...  um, no,” Rufus said. 

More pounding.  Words that sounded like “OPEN THE  DAMN  DOOR!”

“Wait,” Lucy interrupted. “Where’s Flynn?”

Their collective  forward  motion checked for a second, they all looked at each other.

“... that crazy bastard,” Rufus  muttered , and headed for the door.

“ _Rufus_ \--” Wyatt began, but Rufus just stepped around him,  twisted the handle, and shoved the door open.

The Abominable Snowman fell inside, accompanied by a shower of snow.  It shook itself, sending snow  _everywhere_ , and transformed into  a tall man bundled up to his eyeballs, his hat and face mask still covered with snow, with several large  duffels over his shoulders. Rufus  heaved the door shut, and brushed a  really unnecessary amount of snow off his pajamas.

“ Are you out of your  _mind?_ ” Agent Christopher demanded, as Flynn stumbled forward,  trailing snow-covered bags behind him. “What were you thinking?”

It was probably for the best that Flynn’s retort was unintelligible behind his scarf. He was still shedding snow, and it became clear that he was shaking.

“ Into the shower,” Agent Christopher  ordered, as Flynn struggled out of his various layers. “Wyatt, make sure he gets in and out.”

Flynn didn’t even respond sarcastically, which was what really revealed his condition.  W hatever you said about Flynn, and  Rufus had said a lot, he wasn’t someone who shrunk from doing what he thought would help.

Connor helped Lucy clean up all the water, in various phases, as Rufus hauled the groceries to the kitchen.  Not a light load: Agent Christopher hadn’t scrimped.

When he’d emptied the duffels that had held food, he looked at the remaining bag and scratched the back of his head. “What are we going to do about the presents?” They weren’t wrapped.

Agent Christopher looked up from putting away the groceries. “None of them are for me, so, I’ll guess who ordered what and distribute it accordingly.”

Lucy’s raised eyebrow seemed to say  _bold of you to assume none of us got you anything_ , but she didn’t say anything. She did, however, pull something out of the duffel as soon as Agent Christopher turned around to put the milk she was holding in the refrigerator.

By the time Flynn emerged from the shower looking like a normal person and not a wampa, most of them had dressed, and Connor was blaring Handel’s  _Messiah_ .  Lucy was happily hanging the box of decorations that had been at the bottom of the presents, and Rufus was again on  “we’re hours from the nearest emergency room so for God’s sake protect her from herself” duty.

“ Drink this.”  Connor handed  Flynn a steaming mug.

He sniffed it. “Is this a  _hot toddy?_ ”

“You’re welcome,” Connor said firmly.

Flynn sighed.

As soon as Agent Christopher finished divvying up the presents-- into black garbage bags, for plausible deniability-- Lucy made a beeline for the wrapping paper and hurried to her room. Rufus  leaned against the couch where Flynn was sitting with his mug. “So,  should we do that thing where I  say  thank you and you  say something sarcastic ?”

“ Consider it done,” Flynn said.  Then h e hesitated. “ I,  uh, couldn’t have set out without knowing where I was going,  so the, ah, thanks go both ways. ”

“ Great talk,” Rufus said, and clapped him on the shoulder.

When he retrieved his own stash of presents, something fell out of the bag. He put it in his pocket.

“Batteries?” Wyatt asked.

“Yeah,  you know,  I got Jiya a… personal appliance,” Rufus said, just to watch him choke on his coffee.

“ Thanks for... sharing, Rufus,” he muttered. “ I definitely needed to know that.”

Rufus snickered. “Actually I made her a seat warmer.”

Wyatt gave him a Look.

Rufus nodded to his own bag. “That’s not much coal for six people.”

Wyatt shrugged. “ The e conomy is bad.”

“Uh-huh.”

“ You’ll get your present when you get your present, Rufus,” Wyatt told him. “ No peeking.”

Jiya emerged from their room, hesitated, and then crossed the room and unceremoniously hugged Flynn. To say Flynn was surprised would be an understatement. Rufus actually enjoyed the flabbergasted look on his face, and the way he was reduced to just kind of... patting her awkwardly on the shoulders. Then Jiya matter-of-factly went on her way to grab her own bag of presents.

Lucy  came out  her  own room with a beautifully wrapped pile of presents. Rufus didn’t see the point of wrapping the presents when they were going to be  _un_ wrapped in, like, an hour, but whatever. It had clearly made Lucy happy.

“Change of plans,” Agent Christopher announced, coming out of the kitchen. “I ordered a turkey, but after sitting out in the car most of the night it’s frozen solid.”

“What about a hair dryer?” Connor  asked .

Lucy shook her head. “I’ve tried that. Can’t recommend it.”

Wyatt looked at her, as if to say,  _what?_

“ I was in high school,” Lucy explained. “My mom got stuck in the airport coming home from a conference, and my uncle had a heart attack, so my dad was  spending most of the evenings at the hospital.” She looked sad for a moment, but then continued: “So I decided to be helpful and make Thanksgiving dinner.”

“ And what... happened?” Jiya asked.

“It, um, didn’t go very well.”

Lucy was his dear friend, so Rufus didn’t make any comments about the liquidity of water.

“Oh! But nothing caught fire,”  she  added .

They all pictured that for a moment. Then Agent Christopher continued, “So our options are--”

“Or we could build some sort of heat ray,” Connor suggested.

“ Or we could just... have the turkey later?” Rufus said.

Connor looked a little disappointed. “Or that.”

Obviously, his Christmas gift was not  going to be ‘a day without having to talk Connor out of an ill-judged, grandiose scheme.’

“ So our options are to move Christmas dinner to tomorrow,” Agent Christopher said. “ Or to skip the turkey.”

Pause. “I thought what we had planned sounded pretty okay, all things considering,” Jiya said. “ I mean, as a start.  And now we can make it nicer.”

They looked at each other. Jiya’s idea just seemed to... feel right.

The counter filled up quickly; Lucy had seen a long table at the back of the storage closet, so  he helped her pull it out, and then  they and Jiya  cleaned several decades’ worth of grime off of it. When Rufus looked up, Wyatt was filling a pot  large enough  that witches might have used  it  to cook anyone under the age of two. “Did you invite a few extra centuries’ worth of people and forget to tell us?”

“ Leftovers, Rufus,” Wyatt grunted, carrying it over to the stove. “ We’ll be back to canned soup and crackers soon enough.”

Rufus had to give him that one.

He started in on chopping an epic mound of vegetables. He’d been at it long enough that his hand was cramping when his phone buzzed.

Wyatt glanced up. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?”

“You’ve got this... look on your face.”

“I just gotta... um, I’m chatting with my mom and brother.”

“Oh. Right. Here.” Wyatt held out his hand. “I’ll finish that. You... enjoy your call.”

“Thanks, man.”

As he headed to the bedroom, Rufus kind of... steeled himself. He hadn’t seen them in... God, he felt choked up just thinking about it. And now it was Christmas, one of just a handful he’d ever spent away from them.

He would get through this call without breaking down, and then he’d go have his feelings later. Not because he needed to be “manly”  or some stupid shit like that. Because he was gonna be strong for Mom.  She’d been  the rock for both her children for so long, and now it was time he took his own turn.

He knocked on the door to their room and then waited for Jiya to call “come in!”, because he knew she was doing something with presents. She gave him a knowing look, and  stopped on her way out to kiss him, gentle and lingering . Which, it wasn’t gonna be  _that_ hard, but he was never going to pass up  smooching with Jiya.

… or maybe she  didn’t need to be clairvoyant to be able to read him  like a book.

He sat down in the rickety desk chair, turned on all the lights to make his surroundings look less grim, fired up his state-of-the-art encryption, and pulled up the video chat.

It rang for a while. God, something had-- something--

A grainy blur appeared, and then resolved into Kevin’s face, held at a cockeyed angle. “Rufus!”

Rufus tried to speak, but he must’ve breathed a lot of dust in that storage closet, because his throat was tight. He had to clear it. “Hey, little brother.”

“MOM!” Kevin yelled. “Mom, it’s Rufus! She’s in the kitchen,” he explained to Rufus, completely unnecessarily.

And then Mom appeared on screen and immediately broke into a wide smile, and Rufus almost lost it then and there. “Hey, honey,” she said. “Merry Christmas.”

“Merry Christmas, Mom,” he managed, and cleared his throat again. “How’s it, uh... how’s it going?”

They talked for a good hour. After, he shut his laptop and just sat on the bed for a few minutes, his head in his hands. God, it was good to see them. It was also, just...

Watching Mom try to be strong for him and Kevin, while  _he_ was trying to be strong for her and Kevin, was the thing that had nearly undone him. And then Kevin had some inside joke with her about being the man of the house now, and that wrung Rufus’s heart and filled  it with a painful mix of sadness and resentment and guilt.  B ecause Kevin shouldn’t  _have_ to be the man of the house, but  also, he was a good kid...  and though Rufus wasn’t used to thinking of his little brother in these terms, a good man. Seeing his self-deprecation at the thought of trying to fill Rufus’s shoes...

Someone tapped gently at the door.  Rufus hastily wiped some feelings off his face.  After a second, Jiya poked her head inside. “ Hey,” she said softly.

He lifted his head. “Hey.”

She came in, sat down beside him, and put her arm around his shoulders. He sighed, and leaned into her.

“ It went well,” he said after a minute, and even he could hear how drained he sounded.

“ I know,” she said, answering what he hadn’t voiced out. But that was the thing. She  _didn’t_ know. Her life had just been different. She didn’t know the feeling of knowing there was no one else out there to look after them, and  that it was  all on him.

He should be there with them.  _For_ them. But he was stuck out here, saving the world. It was the right thing to do...  and sometimes doing the right thing fucking sucked.

But. He tried to focus on what he had, not what he didn’t have.  No creepy Rittenhouse dicks were using Mom and Kevin as leverage to coerce him into doing their dirty business-- that sword was no longer hanging sickeningly over his head. They knew what Jiya’s seizures were, now. No one was in the hospital.  He was with some of his best friends, and with the woman he loved.

He straightened up. “You get to talk with your mom?”

She shook her head. “ She’s ten hours ahead, so we said we’d talk tomorrow. ”  She sounded a little sad. She’d never come out and said it, but Rufus knew . Jiya’s mom had chosen to go back to Beirut rather than stay with her daughter, and... well, it was Christmas.

Rufus brushed Jiya’s hair out of her face, cupped her face in both hands, and gently kissed the tip of her nose. “I love you,” he said softly.

Jiya smiled up at him, crinkling her nose in that way that she did that was fucking adorable. “ I love you, too.”

He  just smiled at her, and felt how lucky they were, just then .

“I guess we should get back to cooking,” she said after a minute. She tucked her hair behind her ear. “I should probably get this out of my way.”

“Mmm.”

She looked up at him, and hesitated. “Would you... braid it for me?”

It only took him a second to recover from his surprise. “It would be my pleasure.”

He made one utilitarian braid down her back, though Jiya’s hair looked beautiful however it was arranged. Once he’d tied it off with the elastic she handed him, he wrapped his arms around her and rested his head against hers.  She took his hand and brought it to her mouth, pressing a gentle kiss to his knuckles; then she turned his hand over and kissed his palm. Then s he turned and leaned against his shou l der,  and they just sat like that for a moment .

After that quiet little moment, he held on to her hand as they returned to the main room... only to have Lucy  look in their direction and smirk.

“What?”  It wasn’t like they’d been skipping out on helping to have sex.

… not that that was a terrible idea--

“ One thing I’ve learned from Wyatt on these missions is that people generally don’t look... up,” she said, and turned back to her chopping.

Rufus looked up. “Is that fungus on the ceiling?”

“ It’s _mistletoe_ .” Lucy sounded indignant.

“...  oh.”

“I cut it out of colored paper.”

“ Yeah,  I can... see that.”  Well... he was never going to pass up smooching with Jiya, right?

Jiya seemed to feel the same way, and reached up to wrap her arms around his neck.  The warm weight of her pressed against him made him realize just how long it had been since they’d had any time to re ally re lax.  Even with nice moments like when they’d gone to bed last night, h e’d been slowly getting wound tighter than a tension helical spring.  Now, taking a minute to just kiss Jiya, slowly and thoroughly, and completely tune out whatever their teammates were saying...

It felt... perfect. When they pulled away, she smiled up at him, and he didn’t need psychic powers to know that she felt as pleased as he did.  Whatever happened... they had this moment.

He  gently touched a loose section of her hair that he’d missed as he braided . Hope felt dangerous these days, but...  but he’d come farther, starting from less, than it would take to defeat Rittenhouse. And if-- once-- they did, he potentially had the rest of his life ahead of him with Jiya. With the woman he loved.  Bickering over what TV series they were going to binge watch next.

Suddenly, things felt less bleak.

Throats clearing behind them, and deliberate busyness, and  knives thudding on cutting boards, pulled him back to a more mundane level. But nothing was going to ruin his mood, right now.

When they finally sat down to Christmas lunch,  some time later,  it was  to  a bunch of amazing lentil and bean dishes; a small mountain of fluffy rice; the candied yams Rufus could make by heart after helping Mom do it so many times; enough bread to prevent the French Revolution;  roasted mushrooms; and for dessert, ghraybeh and povitica.  It was weird and wonderful.

Together, they made an impressive dent in the food.  Rufus looked around at everyone’s drooping eyelids, when none of them leapt up to clear the table. Was  _this_ Emma’s evil plan? Let the team eat themselves into a food coma before she jumped into the past?

Whatever. Right now he wasn’t worrying about Emma, which was high up on the list of the best Christmas gifts he could have gotten.

“ Well, that was the best meal I’ve had in... weeks,”  Wyatt finally said. 

“ Yeah, go team,” Rufus said. “Maybe after all this is over we could open a restaurant.”

Tough crowd: his suggestion met with groans and snorts.

“We still have the turkey for tomorrow,” Agent Christopher reminded them, which prompted more groans. But “I couldn’t eat another bite” was a _nice_ change from “I haven’t eaten anything in thirty-six hours that didn’t involve leaves and twigs.”

“Presents?” Wyatt suggested.

Connor got out the shot glasses and offered around his Scotch as they sat down to a pile of hastily wrapped presents-- or, in Rufus’s case, unwrapped presents. What? He was standing on _principle_ here.

The sounds of ripping and tearing paper filled the room. Rufus pulled the newspaper off his gift from Wyatt and found a coffee mug shaped like the Death Star.

“Wow,” Rufus said. “I’ve never seen coal like this before.”

Wyatt rolled his eyes.

“Thanks, man,” Rufus added.

Connor made a surprised noise when he unwrapped his gift from Flynn: a bottle of some kind of booze. “This hasn’t been around for--”

“I would love to maintain some plausible deniability here.” Agent Christopher gave Flynn a very stern look.

Flynn shrugged, totally unrepentant.

“Oh, Lucy, thank you.” Agent Christopher sounded genuinely surprised when she unwrapped a bundle of wool. “This is lovely.”

Lucy looked pleased at the praise. “Everyone deserves nice things for their hobbies, right?”

Wyatt picked up the book Rufus had gotten for him. “Nice wrapping--” Then he went still. “History of the 101st,” he said softly. “Thanks, Rufus.”

“Lucy helped me find it,” Rufus felt like he had to explain. Wyatt probably knew all about the division his granddad had been in, but Lucy had said this one had the best and most recent research, or something. Whatever it had, from the look on Wyatt’s face, he’d gotten something right.

Lucy opened a package from Agent Christopher and Connor both, which turned out to be a pair of sock-shoe things, and a bag of chemical warmers. She looked up. “How’d you know?”

Agent Christopher smiled. “You always sit with your feet tucked under you.”

“I made the chemical components of the warmers myself,” Connor added, and Lucy looked... unsettled.

Rufus opened Jiya’s present and immediately felt a deep sense of foreboding, as if a million voices had cried out and suddenly been silenced. The Imperial March started to play in his head.

“What’s that?” Lucy asked.

“It’s, uh.” He looked down at the VHS case. “The Star Wars Holiday Special.” He tried to use a tone that would not be equally appropriate for “a bucket of moldy toenail clippings.”

“Most of the copies were lost,” he explained, trying to sound more enthusiastic. Jiya must have somehow found this one in the past.

“Look inside, Rufus.” Jiya sounded amused.

Rufus warily cracked open the case. Inside, instead of the Abomination, he found-- “Is this a _mission patch_?”

Jiya nodded.

“From--”

“From the first mission where Katherine Johnson was the Flight Director,” Jiya confirmed.

“Wow. Uh, thank you.” He paused. “You put it in the Holiday Special case just to see me freak out, didn’t you.”

Jiya smiled. “Merry Christmas, Rufus.” She leaned forward and kissed him.

Flynn opened a small, newspaper-wrapped book and went so still Rufus thought they were going to have another exhausting dick-measuring contest between their soldiers. “ _The Women of Lockman_ ,” Flynn read after a minute. “Ah... thanks, Wyatt.” He said the words hesitantly, as if unsure of their pronunciation.

Wyatt nodded once.

Finally, as the others were opening their last presents, Jiya opened what Rufus had made her. Her eyes lit up. She leaned over and kissed Rufus again. “Now I won’t have to steal your body heat all the time.”

Rufus scratched the back of his neck. “... I may have miscalculated.”

The light in the room changed. Was it some kind of-- No. No new and exotic error light from the Lifeboat. Just the sun finally coming out outside, reflecting off the snow... the piles and piles of snow. At least they didn’t have to go outside. Not in this century, anyway.

Lucy got up and threw the dusty curtains wide open, letting the light stream inside. “Wow, the sky has this weird blue glow. Haven’t seen that in a while.”

“Sunshine for Christmas,” Jiya said. “We could do worse.”

Rufus looked around at all of them, the piles of discarded wrapping paper, the dishes in the sink, and the presents. Yes. Yes, they could do much worse.

“Hey, Merry Christmas,” he told them all, and was surprised by how sincere and _happy_ it came out.

A ragged chorus of “Merry Christmas” echoed around the room, and Jiya leaned her head against his shoulder.

“Wanna do absolutely nothing until we’re hungry enough for leftovers?” he suggested.

She smiled up at him. “I like the way you think.”

So he felt around on the back of the couch until he could pull the heavy, scratchy, warm blanket over them both; put his arm around her shoulders; and propped his feet up on an empty box.

“I like a lot of things about you,” she added, snuggling even closer.

He smiled. “Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.”

He let his eyes drift close. It was still noisy, but the goal wasn’t necessarily _sleep_ , just a blissful state of not having to do... anything.

“Merry Christmas to all,” he said under his breath, “and to all a good... night.” Afternoon. Whatever. They were time travelers, man.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to JayCee for betaing and being a sounding board!


End file.
